[Severian]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

yeah i didn't think you're rich or anything-- i know your situation

but people have certain attitudes

i guess what irks me (more than irks me) is that in this country:

if you look down on people of color you're a racist. if you look down on women you're a sexist. if you look down on gay people you're a homophobe, on transgenders a transphobe, etc.

but if you look down on the poor-- hey, it's open season on the poor!

i mean to call someone "poor" is actually an insult. you can't make fun of someone on a wheelchair-- but the poors? they supposedly chose it and it means they're stupid, etc.

so in america there will never be a revolution because the poor are programmed for self-hate.

it's not that i'm "for" a revolution really, but in america there's this false notion that everyone is middle class.

this is of course bullshit. there are aristocrats and there are the poor and there's a shrinking middle.

and the poor are told they could be middle class if they only got an education, the middle could be rich if only they played their cards right, so if you're poor it's your choice and you're shit (i know, i'm repeating myself here). the aspirationals are the one who act and spend like a class above without having the actual means (this is where heavy indebtedness comes from).

but nowaways the middle class is proletarized and the poor are the underclass. "hey look at those obsese poor people on a steady diet of sugar and starches! look at their cheap tshirts! ha ha ha!" etc.

i fucking hate that.

the other thing you'd know if you weren't american (because those things are overt and not hidden in other countries) is that social class is not strictly tied to income.

you can be a ruined aristocrat and still an aristocrat. you can be a rich peasant and still a peasant. you can be a self-hating poor. and those attitudes can carry through generations. class attitudes don't depend on last month's paycheck but on a history of social interactions that get bred into individuals.

anyway that's what was behind that.

but yeah, just like everyone in a racialized world is inevitably tainted with racism, everyone in a society with class divisions is going to be classist to an extent. and yeah, that maybe is an unavoidable fact of life in spite of claims of classless utopias, but people shouldn't be shamed for their differences from the elites and the servants of the elites. that shit makes me foam at the mouth like a rabid dog.

Well, I agree all around but I have a splitting migraine so that's all I can be bothered to say.